


All The Wars Fought Inside Your Head

by HubcapsAndAshtrays



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Growing Up, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 21:30:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9403670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HubcapsAndAshtrays/pseuds/HubcapsAndAshtrays
Summary: Were there words that could be said when your family had been torn down and reshaped into something unrecognizable?





	

Her dad dies and so does a piece of her mom. Alex spends the next few weeks pretending not to notice how red and exhausted her mother's eyes have seemed to permanently become.

She refuses to admit just how much it hurts having to sleep with her mother’s muffled cries as a lullaby. Or how much it stings not knowing how to comfort the older woman. Were there even words that could be said when your family had been torn down and reshaped into something unrecognisable?

But even if Alex knew the right words to say or the right things to do, she’s not sure that she would even be able to look at the dark circles under her mother’s eyes without breaking down herself. Which was the last thing everyone needed, especially Kara whose nightmares seemed to have flared back up at the loss of yet _another_ parent.

How could Alex claim to know grief when her little sister was feeling everything threefold? She couldn’t imagine how it must have felt to lose both her mom and dad and then an adopted father barely three years later.

So Alex puts on a brave face and stays up all night beside Kara, loyally keeping watch for the small crease in her brow that indicated an oncoming nightmare and tries her best to soothe it away before it wakes her sweating and screaming.

However, keeping watch over Kara isn't completely selfless. Alex doesn’t know whether or not she would be able to cope with another groggy morning where for a few blissful seconds she forgets that her dad is gone.

She jolts awake one night, cursing herself when she realises that Kara is nowhere in sight. She’s kicking herself as she tiptoes down the creaky stairs. She was meant to be watching over Kara and protecting her, even if it was just from bad dreams.

She hears muffled sniffles and is startled at the sight of Kara embracing her mother on the sofa. Something rises in Alex's chest, she silently makes her way back up the stairs and lies alone in her bed, not understand the bitter tang sat at the back of her throat.

She hates herself just a little for that.

* * *

 

Things start to get better not too long after that, or at least they appear to. Things between her and her mother are strained, and Alex isn't sure why. Maybe it’s because everytime her mom looks at her all she can see is _him_. Or maybe it’s because Alex has spent the last few months avoiding Eliza unable to bear seeing the devastation on her worn features.

She gets called into the principal's office one day after an ‘altercation’ with a student who obviously hadn’t gotten the memo that picking on Kara was _off limits_. This time however instead of being berated the principal gives her a look of sympathy and ‘appoints’ her a counselor.

He’s a middle aged man greying at the temples who keeps asking her questions like ‘How are you feeling?’ and saying that she could ‘Speak to me about anything.’ Alex almost laughs at how untrue that was, speaking about even half of the things she knew would be enough to get her sent to the looney bin.

He asks about her dipping grades and then finally about her father.

Alex doesn’t go to another session after that.

* * *

 

A new student transfers into Alex’s class later that month, she’s a charming girl with a long dark ponytail that swishes back and forth when she walks, and a smile so bright that Alex has to take double take.

Alex can’t explain why her heart begins to race when the new girl chooses the empty seat beside her.

She spends the rest of the class in a daze, stealing glances at the girl, and so is completely unprepared when she is suddenly called on for a question. Alex ends up stuttering and babbling her way through an answer, which turns out to be incorrect. Her embarrassment is more than worth it though as she notices the girl trying and failing to hide a small giggle behind her hand, Alex can’t help the blush that covers her face.

Her name is Victoria, but she allows a select few --including Alex, to call her Vicky. For a reason Alex feels she'll never quite understand, Vicky with her perfect freckles and green eyes chooses to hang around with her.

Alex spends Thursdays evenings studying with Vicky and soon enough her grades start going back up.

Vicky eventually meets Kara and instead of teasing her or giving her strange looks like everyone else does, she instead giggles at her antics and idiosyncrasies taking it all in her stride. Alex can’t control the smile that spreads across her face.

For the first time since her dad died things are starting to look up.

Until they come crashing down.

It happens during one of their many sleepovers. Alex being a light sleeper --even more so in an unfamiliar bed. Wakes up in the middle of the night to find herself face to face with her best friend’s sleeping face. Even in her sleep she was stunning. There's a warm leg thrown over her thigh and another wrapped over her own. Suddenly there was that strange feeling again, the one she came to associate with Vicky.

Maybe it's the blanket of darkness or the adrenaline racing through her veins that causes Alex to tilt her head downward and peer unflinchingly into the others girls face.

She finds herself getting closer and closer, eyes fixed on her lips.

Suddenly Vicky wakes up, a confused look forming on her sleepy face. “What are you doing?”

Alex feels panic rising, she forces it away with a fake laugh. “You were snoring like a lawnmower” she lies.

Vicky makes a face at her before falling back asleep.

Sleep however was the furthest thing from Alex's mind. What had just happened? Had she just tried to kiss her best friend? Alex tries to shrug it off as a result of exhaustion.

But there are alarm bells going off at the back of her mind and words being hurled around that she’s only heard sneered by bullies.

All of a sudden her life has done a 180 because now she’s the freak and Kara is the normal one.

Maybe she should have spoken to that counselor, maybe he could have told her what had gone wrong with her wiring, and how to fix it.

* * *

 

Vicky never does bring up what had happened. She most likely didn't even remember it or maybe it hadn’t seemed like a big deal to her, but Alex couldn't get it out of her head where it sat taunting her.

Suddenly every whisper in the school halls seemed to be about her and every look hostile. Even her own mother asking her about the upcoming prom seemed to become less than innocent.

She spends the next few days irritable and paranoid. She and Vicky end up having a ridiculous argument on a day when Alex’s temper is at its shortest.

She ends up losing her best, and pretty much only friend. She cries not only for Vicky but also for her father, who she hadn’t allowed herself to mourn for. Everything began pouring out and showed no sign of stopping.

She wipes her tears, pushes everything down and slinks home. She’s sure her mother doesn’t even notice.

Years later after having a bit too much fun the night before Alex ends up attending the wrong class. It’s a first year psychology lecture instead of bio-engineering, but she’s too tired and hungover to move.

The last thing she hears before falling asleep is something about people being made up of their experiences and memories.

It’s only years later when she’s able to save a hospital ward full of children or take a bullet to the vest does it come back to her. She suddenly realises that everything that had happened in her life both the good and the bad modeled her into the person that she is. Whether it’s her almost self destructive urge to protect her sister or her tendency to drown or her woes at the bottom of a bottle. Is what it is, and it’s a part of her, a reflection of everything she's been through.

And that she thinks might be something she’s finally come to accept.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ...So it turns out i'm not really a dialogue person... On a different note I came back like i promised i would! I had no idea what this was when i started writing it and honestly i still don't. I like to refer to it as a tense nightmare, because seriously they are all over the place. I decided to try and give the angst a break but alas, although i don't really feel like this is particularly angsty it seems more angry and/or resentful to me.
> 
> Regardless i hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
